You might know
Matthew Bishop,
American business
editor of The
Economist, as the
author of that
magazine’s dazzling
2006 cover story, “Billanthropy”—an
account of Bill Gates’s and Warren Buffett’s
historic charitable initiatives.

Bishop now pairs with Michael Green, an
expert on the relationship between government
and the nongovernmental sector, to
offer Philanthrocapitalism: How the Rich Can
Save the World—an extraordinarily
timely, comprehensive, and
reader-friendly collection of information
and insights about the
state of philanthropy today.

Bishop and Green’s two years
of intense research included interviews
with today’s star players in
philanthropy—and they lace the
book with quotes from Bill Gates,
Ted Turner, Bill Clinton, George
Soros, Pierre Omidyar, Michael Bloomberg,
Sir Richard Branson, David Rockefeller, and
many others. One of my favorite quotes is by
Soros: “I indulge in political philanthropy.
I try to use my money to influence how governments
spend money.” The authors also
interviewed philanthropy practitioners distinguished
not only by their wealth and position,
but also by the roles they use to revolutionize
the patterns in which philanthropic
dollars are given, raised, and deployed so as
to have the greatest impact.

These practitioners include Christopher
Cooper-Hohn, founder of the London-based
Children’s Investment Fund Management
(TCI), who gives to his Children’s
Investment Fund Foundation one-third of
TCI’s annual management fee plus half of
every percentage point of profit the fund
earns each year (above a minimum return of
11 percent net of fees). The foundation focuses
on African children in need. There is
also the Rockefeller Foundation’s Judith
Rodin, who strives to bring her 20th-century
foundation into the 21st century, and Eli
Broad, whose Broad Foundation is among
the largest foundations focusing on efforts
to improve urban public education.

There are venture capitalists turned venture
philanthropists, such as Mario Morino,
who have not only poured their own wealth
into solving social problems in new ways
but also recruited others to join them in
ponying up millions to provide opportunities
for young people in need; mainline investment
bankers like Goldman
Sachs’s Chuck Harris, who create
pools of charitable dollars to
provide growth capital for well-run
nonprofits with potential to
extend their reach; and even
celebrities like Diddy, Bono, and
Angelina Jolie, who not only offer their wealth and name to
causes but also hit the trenches
work directly with the beneficiaries of their efforts.

Bishop and Green touch on practically
everything of consequence happening today
in the world of philanthropy. The only notable
things they missed were the ever-growing
role of community foundations everywhere,
and how the suddenly increasing number of
non-perpetual foundations has stimulated
the growth of venture philanthropy and
high-engagement giving. Happily, they always
make this dense information digestible,
using straightforward and humorous
prose, fresh insights, and
balanced reporting. Examples of
the latter: Although they clearly
look favorably on
“philanthrocapitalism”—which
they define as applying the skills
of moneymaking to the philanthropic
enterprise—they note its
cons, too. And they set the
philanthropic record straight when it comes
to Andrew Carnegie, who deserves credit
for today’s social entrepreneurship, venture
philanthropy, high-engagement grantmaking,
and strategic philanthropy, all of which
he practiced and preached 120 years ago.

The short of it is, I plan to make this book
required reading for students in my 2009
spring term course on philanthropy, voluntarism,
and nonprofit law and management at
Duke University. No other book on charitable
giving and the world’s rapidly evolving social
sector comes close to its rich trove of insights
and relevant data about the many new currents
in the flow of donations from the
wealthy to the world’s needy. The book will
fascinate and inspire anyone who reads it.

Joel Fleishman is professor of law and public policy
studies at Duke University. He is the author of The
Foundation: A Great American Secret—How Private
Money Is Changing the World, and he served as co-chair
of Independent Sector’s Committee on the Self-
Regulation of Nonprofit Organizations.